Putain de temps de merde.

I have been absolutely flabberghasted at how much the weather has been affecting my mood lately. I first noticed it in Spain, I think. I suppose you tend to take note of the weather more when you're walking around in it, traveling through it, and only have a limited supply of dry clothes and shoes. Unfortunately we got about half rain in our travels. Most of Barcelona was rainy, as well as almost all of Granada. As my travel buddy will tell you, I am much more optimistic and cooperative when I'm not cold and wet.

Exhibit A: Wet and cold in Granada. Jillian the travel buddy on the left.























Exhibit B: Our one sunny day in Barcelona.

























It seems to have held upon my return, as well, and I'm wondering if it was always like this or if this is a recent development. Spring can be beautiful in Angers, when it wants to be. There is an abundance of flowers everywhere you look, and it just has a really positive energy to it. The week I returned it was gorgeous, in the 70's at least, not a cloud in the sky. No matter how much drama was going on around me (and believe me, there was plenty), I was not phased. I was on top of the world.

As I look out the window now, it has just finished a 30-second bout of hail and is looking quite surly indeed. It's been raining for the last few days and is supposed to continue off and on through the rest of the week. Although the people-drama level around me has decreased significantly, I must say that I'm feeling lower than I was at this time last week.

Europe does rain differently than the Midwest, at least what I've gathered from my experiences here and what I've heard about Ireland. There are no storms; I have not heard thunder once since being here. I wouldn't actually mind a warm summer storm right now. At home I love standing by the back door, taking in the scents, watching the sidewalks flood. But here, it's just kind of cold and slow and miserable. On the upside, rain here seems to have more holes in it. If it's a rainy day in St. Louis, I will not see one patch of blue all day. Here, it will rain for ten minutes, then some patchy clouds will blow over, then it rains for twenty, then it hails for less than two minutes, then the sun peaks out again. Some geographical particularity is at play here. A weatherman could explain it to me, I'm sure.

I'm trying to analyze the situation and figure out why this has all of the sudden come to light. I've come up with three possible solutions:
1) It's genetic. My father is affected by moderate seasonal mood changes, although to my knowledge this has never been seriously diagnosed by anyone but my mother.
2) After being subjected to Mother Nature's disaffection for two weeks, I have become more aware of the weather and it continues to affect my mood regardless of the fact that I can now more easily escape from its effects.
3) I was so delighted with the warmth, sun and blue skies upon my return that it's now just that much more a slap in the face to once again be a victim of the cold and rain.

Whatever the case may be, I consider myself fortunate to have access to fixin's for onion soup, red wine, and streamable films on the internet.

Bad attitudes

Venting time.

Coming to France, I was looking forward to meeting tons of people from all over the world who share the same ideals about intercultural and international exchange with me. I've found plenty, don't get me wrong. But there are more people here with negative, ethnocentric, and indifferent attitudes than I thought there would be. I met more interesting people in less than two weeks of traveling Spain than in my first two months here.

It's most evident in my French classes. In every class there's at least one or two students (usually Americans, but not always) who speak only their own language, don't pay attention to what's going on, and at times seem almost annoyed to have to sit through another class. I can understand that, every once in a while, you'll have a bad day and going to class is the last thing you feel like doing. But all the time?

There's one girl, an American, who will only speak French if she's responding to a professor's question. She speaks English to everyone else. Even students of other nationalities--if they speak even a little bit of English and she knows it, she will refuse to speak French with them. And all through class, I'll hear her talking to her friend about how much this class is a waste of time, and so on. Not particularly helpful in an oral comprehension course to have the people sitting next to you constantly blabbering out negative energy. It's all I can do to put a mental wall between myself and them, so as to not allow my mental images of jumping up and stabbing them with a pen be realized.

I am here to learn. Sure, sometimes I'll be with English-speaking friends and, in casual conversation, it's easier to switch to our native language. Towards the end of the day, French gets tiring. But why on earth would you come to France and enroll in a language program, if you're going to put no effort into learning the language? You can hear the difference when these people are, goodness, forced to respond in class--it's atrocious. Two months here and you're still speaking like you would in a high school course?

It really just serves as a reminder for me of why I'm here, and as an incentive to try even harder. Maybe they don't have the same goals that I do. In any case, I am intent on making the best of the two months I have left. Game on.

Mezclando des langues

More about language, Anna? Golly gee, you are so creative.

Seriously, though. Traveling around Spain the last two weeks for break, my poor brain has been fried. I'm not sure how people come to be fluent in 5+ languages, I can't even handle two.

Upon arrival to Barcelona, my travel buddy came to meet me at the bus station with two Spaniards she had met at the hostel earlier that day. This girl is ridiculously fluent in Spanish (although she won't admit it herself), so on the walk back to the hostel she had no problems keeping up a conversation with them, joking around about her Mexicanized Spanish or marveling at the quantity of prostitutes on the streets as we made our way through the red light district. I, however, did not have such an easy time.

Every. Word. Came. Out. French.

I've decided that at this point in time, I have two language modes in my head: English mode, and foreign language mode. The latter seems to be completely overloaded with French at the moment; Spanish is packed away in boxes in some dark closet, cold and forgotten. Upon trying to call it back to use, I've found that entire chunks of my Spanish knowledge have seemingly disappeared. I can't produce the language as easily anymore. Although I could understand it perfectly well, there would be words and verb conjugations and syntactical constructions that would come out completely wrong, if at all.

Although it got a little easier as the trip wore on (my first success being able to semi-fluently negotiate my way into Easter mass at the cathedral in Seville where my friends were already seated), I don't feel like I ever got back to the level I reached while in Costa Rica. I'm highly considering taking an upper-level Spanish class upon my return next semester, to force myself back into it. I'm hoping I haven't lost it for good.

This has me really wondering how things will go for me in the next few years. I'd like to go to Brazil for at least a year after I graduate, but will I lose my French while I'm down there? I suppose it goes to show that if you don't use it, you lose it, but how exactly does one keep up more than two foreign languages at a time? Although my career plan is fuzzy at best, I see myself doing something involving translation/interpretation somewhere down the road, after a few years' travel getting some more language experience under my belt. How best to gain new languages without losing the older ones in the process?

It'll take more dedication, I think. More motivation to seek out opportunities to practice, less shyness and fear of making a fool of myself. This is what I want to do, right?

Right. Go team.